The two point guards combined for 40 points, and the Spurs needed every one of them because of Nowitzki. He knows how to get a call, as Gregg Popovich said earlier in this series, but Nowitzki also knows how to do a few other things.

Antonio McDyess did about as well on him as anyone could do, and the Spurs brought another defender to help when Nowitzki drove. And he still scored 35 points.

He started the second half that way, spinning in another jumper. And this time Ginobili fouled Nowitzki, just as he did in Game 7 of the 2006 series.

That one took the air out of the defending champs. This one altered the air going into Ginobili. Nowitzki unintentionally clipped Ginobili as he turned, getting a call and a basket in doing so, providing further evidence that Popovich is right.

Nowitzki really does know how to draw fouls, doesn’t he?

Eventually there will be jokes in the Spurs locker room, maybe as early as today when Ginobili gets back from the doctors and his teammates know he’s all right. The Spurs might wonder, for example, why Ginobili’s famously oversized beak wasn’t called for a flagrant.

He’s heard it all before. A highlight came a few years ago when Brent Barry came up with a Christmas present for Ginobili — a giant, novelty nose-hair trimmer.

Friday night there were fewer laughs. Ginobili immediately grabbed his nose and went to the bench, blood running into his mouth, and a few minutes later, he ran to the locker room.

“We will try to control the bleeding,” a Spurs release said then. “Otherwise, it is up to his ability to tolerate pain. After the game it will be determined if it is broken.”

After the game they knew. Nasal fracture.

It was the most famous bloody moment in a Spurs playoff game since Parker and Steve Nash cracked heads a few years ago in Phoenix. Unlike the Suns, who couldn’t stop the bleeding and couldn’t use Nash at the end of that game, the Spurs lost Ginobili early enough in the second half that there was time for a recovery.

Ginobili came back to the floor with about five minutes left in the third quarter. When asked if that surprised him, Richard Jefferson shook his head.

“He swats bats, man,” Jefferson said. “When he came back, we were wondering what took him so long.”

The nose looked about twice its size, which made it really, really big. He was also breathing through his mouth out of necessity.

If Ginobili was able to tolerate the pain, as the release suggested, what he did next was classic hard-nosed Manu — he went to the basket where another elbow could have easily caught him again.

At the time, the Mavericks were in the lead, surging like the NBA’s best road team. So Ginobili opened the fourth quarter with a drive, then followed with two more that also drew fouls. On the second he pumped his fist, and the crowd howled, and it had the feel of 2006.